Safety caps for preventing children from gaining access to potentially hazardous contents stored within containers are well known in the closure art. Efforts expended in developing such safety caps have prevented thousands of accidental injuries from occurring each year. However, most prior art safety caps are undesirable because they are either too easy for a child to remove or too difficult for an adult to remove.
One effective prior art childproof cap is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,316,162 which issued to Pierson on May 31, 1994. This patent discloses a two-piece safety cap for a container which is universally adaptable when mounted on various sized pressurized containers which have a standard sized valve rim. The two-piece childproof cap disclosed in the aforementioned Pierson patent includes a collar and a cover having corresponding alignment arrows thereon so that an adult user would know when the cover may be removed from the collar and when the cover is in a locked position on the collar. The alignment arrow feature of the Pierson childproof cap is well known in the art.
Notwithstanding the effectiveness of the Pierson childproof cap, thousands of unnecessary emergencies occur every year when children accidentally come into contact with potentially dangerous products stored within containers. These products have various uses and are generally safe when used properly by a knowledgeable adult. However, many common types of household products such as cleaners, insecticides, paints and the like are stored within aerosol cans. These products are generally used by spraying them directly onto their intended target. Although, aerosol cans provide a quick and efficient way to dispense pressurized products from a container, these types of dispensers can also be dangerous if the pressurized products therein are misused. For example, blindness may result if a child accidentally sprays oven cleaner into his or her eyes. Other products can cause serious injuries if they are improperly applied to the lungs or skin of a person or an animal.
Even when aerosol containers are stored in generally safe places which may be difficult to access, children have a tendency to climb or find ways to gain access to the aerosol can. Thus, it is particularly important to provide a safety cap that cannot be removed from an associated container unless the user has the knowledge of how to open the cap so that children will be prevented from gaining access to potentially dangerous products within the container. Further, it is desirable for the safety cap to be easily removed from its locked position by an adult user.
Despite the many efforts which have been made to develop effective childproof caps for placement over the top of various types of containers, including pressurized containers, these efforts have not been entirely successful because children are often smarter than the manufacturers of safety caps give them credit for and thus, find ways to access the contents of a container. Moreover, many elderly people who may suffer from arthritis have difficulty in removing most prior art safety caps as they usually require a great deal of hand strength in order to remove them from their locked position.
In order to address these problems, the present invention provides a childproof safety cap which requires an additional amount of knowledge and coordination to open the safety cap. The required knowledge is easily understand by adults so that the alignment arrows can be quickly aligned and the cover can then be easily removed from its locked position on an associated collar without requiring a lot of hand strength. However, the knowledge required to open the present safety cap eliminates a large amount of risk associated with an unknowledgable child accidentally aligning arrows on the safety cap and thereafter removing the cover thereof.